


Old Times Hide Better Memories

by FiveAM



Category: Young Justice - All Media Types
Genre: Drama, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, I Will Go Down With This Ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-27 06:42:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16213574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FiveAM/pseuds/FiveAM
Summary: Nightwing and Batgirl work together to stop a drug trafficking ring, and Batgirl wants to know why Nightwing hasn't come back from his leave yet.  Little does she know of the emotions he's feeling after leading the team and Wally's death.





	1. Friends and Memories

**Author's Note:**

> Another story I had the urge to write regarding these two. Sorry to anyone who ships him with Starfire, I just like Barbara Gordon/Batgirl way too much to have her not be with him. Even though this story may have come out a bit rushed, I still liked the concept of it. Please enjoy!

They say that time heals all wounds. Unfortunately, some wounds are deeper than others, so time can’t fully heal the person before they die. Wally’s death was crushing to the team, and to Artemis and Nightwing in particular. Both of them knew that they would never be able to truly get over the loss, since to Artemis, he was the love of her life, and to Nightwing, he was the one who was always there from the beginning, his best friend. However, how both coped with it was different; Artemis decided to continue on as Tigress, and made sure Bart would continue where Wally left off. Nightwing, on the other hand, needed time. He already lost his parents and Jason, and now he lost his best friend, too. He needed to take some time to himself, to come to grips with losing yet another important person in his life, and so he left, leaving Batgirl to help Aqualad in leading the team.

Batgirl was more than competent at leading the team. Studying both Batman and Nightwing over the past few years helped her to hone her leadership skills and they showed. Aqualad was mainly in charge of assigning missions to teams, while she worked a variety of roles, from gathering intel on future missions to leading alpha squad on extended missions. She was able to fit into the role with ease, and the efficiency she had was second to none.

For as much as she enjoyed it, though, she couldn’t help but feel a bit empty inside. She was always disappointed every time she entered the watchtower only to find that Dick hadn’t come back yet. This was his team, after all, the one that he helped found and led for a while. Sure, his leadership wasn’t the smoothest, especially considering that he hid huge amounts of information from the team that only seemed to hurt them as time went on, but he was still their leader. 

They had seen each other multiple times during his leave, though. Being friends for years, they met up several times during the month when neither had superhero duties to deal with. Dick never gave up being a hero either; he was basically Gotham’s protector now since Batman was so busy with the league, and Barbara and Tim had their own obligations to the Team.

Dick, in all honesty, loved being Gotham’s protector for the time being. After Wally’s death, returning to his hero roots was quite therapeutic for him. Maybe it was reconnecting with his past, or maybe it was not having the pressures that came with being on a team mission. Whatever it was, it was a wonderful thing.

Still, he missed it. He missed leading a squad on a mission that would inevitably get screwed up, only for them to win in the end, anyway. He also missed helping Tim learn how to be a good leader and seeing all of his successes. He really missed Barbara, too. They never met up anymore at night simply because of how busy she was with the team, and he missed working together with her.

Apparently, God had heard him thinking because, after he had just finished taking down a bunch of street goons (in record time), out of the shadows came Batgirl.

“Fancy meeting you here” said Dick.

“Where else would I be?” asked Barbara.

“Helping to lead the team, maybe?”

“Took the night off. Personal business.”

“As does everyone, anymore, it seems like.” He walked up to her and gave her a hug. “Nice to see you, especially in costume” 

“What, you prefer Batgirl to Barbara Gordon?”

“Well, considering I haven’t worked with one of them for like a month...”

“Always the same with you.” She watched as Nightwing looked over the men he knocked out.

As Nightwing checked over the goons, he asked “Seriously, though. Why are you here?”

“You’ve been out for a month from the team. I want to know when your coming back.”

“Soon” was all he responded with.

“That’s not a good answer.”

“Then what is?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a week or a few days. You can’t seriously expect me to be the only one who is wondering when you are coming back. This is your team after all.”

“It’s not that simple. I’ve been dealing with a lot of emotions in the aftermath of Wally’s death.”

“So has Artemis, and though I can’t say how well she’s doing, she seems to at least be coping well with it.”

“You and I both know I’m not Artemis.”

“And yet, she seems better off than you. You need to tell me, why are you taking so long to come back?”

This conversation was not how either expected it to go, and Barbara was crossing boundaries in order to get the answers she once from Dick. These were not her best words she had spoken to someone, and she’ll probably regret them in the future. She had to admit, she didn’t know what Dick was going through.

Dick had to cope with a lot in the past month since Wally died. Not only was his death crushing in it’s own right, but it brought back memories of when Dick watched his own family die. On top of that, he had come off of a leadership role that may be seen by some as disastrous, since he kept so many secrets from the team and had their old base destroyed for the sake of keeping Kaldur’s mission a secret. He was already not happy with how his results turned out, and now he had to deal with yet another loss in his life.

Barbara, of course, could tell that all of this was weighing on him. However, she always expected him to bounce back. She knew about his family’s death, but even so, he was always smiling, it seemed like, when they still went to Gotham Academy. She pretty much took his emotions for granted.

Their talk was interrupted by a phone going off in one of the thug’s pockets. Suspecting the sender is the person he’s after, Nightwing took the phone and checked the message. Lo and behold, it was exactly his golden nugget.

“Gotcha.”

“Who?”

“A drug trafficker I’ve been tailing for a couple days. I suspect his drugs are laced with fear toxin from Scarecrow.”

A name she hadn't heard for a while. Heck, most villains in Gotham she hadn't dealt with for a while. Tempted to help bring down an old foe, she asked “Where are they now?”

“An abandoned warehouse, by the docks.”

They both took off, setting sights on an all-too-familiar location for them.


	2. Like Old Times

As they arrived, they saw trucks near the sight where the drugs were. The trucks had gas trailers hooked to them. They noticed that the thugs were emptying the contents of the tanks into another tank directly inside the warehouse.

Both Nightwing and Batgirl were familiar with how most of these traffickers used the fear toxin; they would normally turn the toxins into a gas, and spray it over whatever drug they thought people would buy at the time.

This trafficker was particularly interesting because he thought it would be a good idea to use it with PCP.

“We need to get in there” said Nightwing. “Lord knows how psychologically damaging that mixture could be.”

“Both of us through the front?”

“No. I’m feeling stealthy right now, and I want some of that to analyze. Stay here and keep a look out while I go in and take a sample for analysis.”

“No action?” asked Batgirl, genuinely surprised. 

“I’ve spent the last month doing nothing but action. A change of pace, so to speak.”

He immediately jumped off of the roof of the building they were on and made his way to the side of the warehouse. His entrance was a cracked window covered by some boxes on the inside. He sneaked his way into and around the warehouse, using old equipment and the shadows for cover (these thugs must've cared a little too much about the returns they would get from selling the stuff if they bought a few machines to help with efficiency, and yet couldn't be bothered to pay for a generator and some lights. Instead, they simply used the outside lights from the building across the street and flashlights). The drugs were being placed in small bags which were then covered with the gas. As they were being packed, he snuck a bag out, reversed his sneak, and was back on top of the building Batgirl was on within 10 minutes.

“Your slipping on your time” she told him.

“Screw off.” He quickly analyzed the substance to see just how bad the effects of the drugs were. He was not thrilled with the results.

“This is bad. The mixture can be so powerful that if someone doesn’t have a high tolerance, it can lead to someone going into a catatonic state, if it doesn't kill them in a few minutes. This operation needs to be shut down fast.”

Using the holographic computer built into her suit, Barbara was able to see through the building and count how many men there were. “There’s no more than fifty men down there. Fifteen have guns. Five outside, ten on the catwalks inside.”

“I’ll take the ones outside first. You sneak in and start clearing out the warehouse. I’ll join you once I’m finished out here.”

“Understood.”

Before she left, Nightwing said “Hey, one more thing before you go down there.”

“What?”

At that, he gave her a kiss. It surprised her, and only lasted a second or two. When Nightwing pulled away, he told her “Be careful down there.”

She managed to regain control of herself and said “I will” and made her way down to the spot where Nightwing entered before.

When she made it inside, Nightwing made his way to the opposite side and got all of the guards' attention by throwing rocks. In typical bat fashion, all the guards searched the alley on the side of the warehouse, only to be ambushed by Nightwing. Taking lessons learned from Bruce, he first knocked the guns out of the hands of the guards before knocking all five of them out with a few knocks to the head with his Eskrima sticks (how convenient for them to form a circle around him, too).

It didn’t take long for him to hear gunshots coming from inside the warehouse. He rushed to the front of it to see several men rushing out and Batgirl doing her best to dodge every bullet that came her way, her bulletproof suit made the occasional hit nothing more than a small sting. Nightwing still didn’t like the sight and rushed in, scaling the catwalks on one side and knocked each shooter off of their feet. He disarmed each of them as they fell to the ground.

The lack of shooting on one side caused the other shooters to stop shooting Batgirl and set their sights on Nightwing. Seeing this as a perfect moment for her, she set to work on taking down the shooters on her side while Nightwing finished on his side. It wasn’t long before all men had been disarmed and defeated.

Regrouping, Nightwing asked “Do you know what happened with the leader?”

She went behind a couple of stacked boxes to pull him out, wrapped up in a line she used the moment she entered (and got herself caught in the process).

“He was my first target.”

At that, the police arrived, and both set to work at rounding up all of the men that didn’t run out of the warehouse when the shooting started.


	3. Opening Up A Better Future

Both Nightwing and Batgirl watched on top of the warehouse roof as the police finished up their search through the warehouse. Without warning, he approached her from behind and gave her a hug.

“I’m so glad you’re safe” he whispered to her. First the kiss, now this. She couldn’t figure out whether to be dumbfounded or just accept this. Sure, the had an intimate past, but this was still so unlike him. Most girls would kill for this, so why was she more confused than anything?

“Are you doing OK, Dick?”

“Sorry. It’s just with all that happened with the team and Wally’s death, I’ve been scared to lose someone else.”

Now there’s a word she never thought Dick would ever use to describe how he feels. In fact, that word at all was almost wiped from the dictionary altogether. Here he was, the first person officially trained by Batman, admitting he’s scared.

It made her feel all the more guilty about what she said before. “Dick, I’m sorry about earlier. You didn’t deserve me saying all of that to you.”

“And I’m sorry I haven’t talked to you more about this. I guess I thought this was something only I could manage.”

“You should talk about it. I haven’t seen you this protective and smitten with me.”

Once the cops left, they sat on the side of the roof and he opened up to her. He mentioned two things that were getting to him more than anything else.

The first was how all the people he’s cared about in his life always seem to die or leave. It started with his family, and seeing them die right in front of him. He then talked about losing Jason, and how he failed to properly guide him in the role of being Robin. Jason was always a violent kid, and Dick felt that he could have done more to help Jason with that. Maybe he wouldn't have rushed after the Joker the way he did, and he'd still be alive. He felt like he failed him, and how he refused to make the same mistake with Tim. Finally, there was Wally, his best friend on the team who was there since the beginning. Of course he would be upset about losing him, the one person not part of the bat family that Dick bonded with more than anyone else.

That explains why he was so concerned for her.

“So what’s the second thing?”

Letting out a sigh, Dick asked “Do you think I was like Batman when I led?”

This was a tough question to answer. Barbara knew just how much Dick didn’t want to be Batman, to focus on the mission at hand with any and all disregard for others. If she was being honest with herself, though, he was. He was doing everything Batman would have done had he led; he kept secrets, he pulled fake-outs, he refused to let the team know what was going on. He even led them to believe that Aqualad had betrayed them and that Artemis had died. The team was in mourning, something that even Nightwing didn’t expect to happen. At times, not only was Dick like Batman, he may have been worse. That may explain why his leave was taking longer than others assumed, especially for someone who loved the superhero gig as much as he did.

She didn’t want to sugarcoat it. He didn’t lead as well as he could have (everyone knew just how good of a leader Nightwing could be), and he deserved to be called out on it. Plus, she was his friend, his best friend, and he was the last person she wanted to lie to.

And yet, she couldn’t. He’s had a lot to deal with over the course of his life, and in the past month, he lost his best friend, he became the leader he feared he would become, and he admitted how scared he was of losing Barbara too. Did she really want to put any more stress on him than he already had to bear? She decided it was best to just answer that question with silence.

“That’s what I thought” said Nightwing in the most somber tone he could have possibly used.

This was a lot of information to process. Any secrets Dick may have hid from her, even after he left, were out in the open now. She knew what was going on with him now, but there was a lot of emotions that he was feeling that she wasn’t sure she could help him with. She’s a member of the Bat family, the family that, the more she thinks about it, is more flawed than she first thought. A family of secrets and espionage, who’s emotions must be kept on the down low in order to complete a task as efficiently as possible. It’s really a wonder that they even allowed themselves to smile sometimes.

What Dick just did was break all of that; he said everything. He wasn’t a hero, he was a human, a human that just spilled his heart out to a woman that he was growing to love more and more each day it seemed like. He was emotionally vulnerable, a very rare event for any hero dressed in costume.

She had to say something, though, so she said “Even so, you shouldn’t hold all of that against yourself. Regardless of how you did, you had a lot to handle, and you led as well as you could in this situation. You will get better, I know you too well to think otherwise.”

“But I don’t deserve it. I kept so many secrets and caused so much anger that it’s hard to think that it was even me. I did exactly what I hoped i would never do.”

Putting her hand on Dick’s, Barbara told him “I think you’re being too hard on yourself. You led the best you could, and you weren’t a disaster. The Reach were defeated, in no small part, to how you handled everything.”

“It still doesn’t excuse all the secrets I kept.”

Switching tactics, Barbara simply said “If you don't like what you did, then just don't do it again.”

That got him to laugh a little. “Gee, thanks. I never would have thought that.”

The way he said that got her to laugh, too. It was a good way to help get each other’s spirits lifted. A good laugh could do wonders for them.

Feeling better, but still slightly somber, he said “Even without the leadership stuff, though, it never gets any easier to lose someone.”

Tightening her grip on Dick’s hand, she said “I know. I’m sorry you lost someone else.”

“Barbara, I know this will be a hard thing to promise, but can you promise me that you’ll stay?”

Leaning in to hug him, she said “I promise to never leave. Don’t think for a second that you’re meant to be alone, Dick. I’ll be with you forever.”

It was a hard thing to promise. She couldn’t count for any outside influences, and considering their jobs as heroes, death could find either of them at any time. But she loved him too much to tell him anything else. She knew his history, his insecurities, and she was his best friend. She was a constant in his life he could always seem to count on. Barbara wanted to make sure that he knew that she would stick with him as long as she possibly could. If they were lucky, then death would find them at the exact same time.

He returned her hug, holding her like no other woman in his life before. What she said was what he needed to hear at the time, and he heard it from the one girl he wanted to hear it from.

After releasing her from the hug, he gave her another kiss, this time one that she returned. Both decided that this was enough to finally start their relationship both had wanted for a while. They both cared about each other way too much to lie to themselves and say that they wanted to continue to hold off on it. Dick’s history with women was now irrelevant. He found the one woman worth being with forever.

She cuddled into him when they broke it and asked “So when are you coming back?”

Wishing to give himself an actual day of rest, and maybe spend some time with his new girlfriend, he asked “Is two days from now a good answer?”

“Absolutely.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize the ending shares some elements from my last story, but that was just what I thought fit best for the story I was telling. Also, if there's one thing as a writer that can either be incredibly easy or incredibly difficult to write, it's organic conversations between characters. Anyway, thanks as always for reading. Barbara's a better match for Dick than Koriand'r. Good Night!


End file.
